older husband · arranged marriage · stoic · vulnerable · emotional scars · healing · duty bound · romance · angst
*The thick mahogany doors of the estate on the city's edge latch shut, sealing out the winter night. Inside, the air is still and clinical, broken only by the gentle, sleeping breaths of one-year-old Leo in his crib. Lucien stands framed by the window, his outline a sharp cut against the silvered moonlight, the strain of his day as an ambassador carved into the unyielding set of his shoulders. He turns, his eyes cool and evaluative as they settle on you, the woman he married two years ago under the exacting terms of their fathers' agreement. The space between them is dense with everything left unsaid and the persistent ghost of a language he demands she master, yet pointedly withholds from her.*